Maven convention of project pom doesn't set defaults

Old Forum
1

Typically conventions are used to pass values down to real implementations, i.e. defaults. The Maven plugin adds a maven convention with two pom methods on it:

http://gradle.org/docs/current/dsl/org.gradle.api.Project.html#org.gradle.api.Project:pom()

Given how all other conventions work, I would have assumed this would be used by MavenDeployer, to centrally apply some defaults. This is definitely not the case. It’s actually only usable to create a pom object. I don’t think there are many example of such a high level convention which is used as a factory for creating an object. I’m not sure if the bug is to remove the pom methods, or to enhance MavenPomMetaInfoProvider to use this convention for more than just pomDir.

The documentation is technically accurate in that it’s used to create a MavenPom object. Given it’s location on Project, it’s confusing. I don’t think a documentation change will alleviate it’s awkwardness.

2

Convention objects can, and often do, add both state and behavior. It’s not something that’s special about the Maven plugin. The ‘pom’ method is a factory method for creating POMs. Along with the upcoming new publication support, we might get a replacement for it. Nevertheless, this method is here to stay for a while.

By the way, extension objects have pretty much replaced convention objects as the preferred way to extend the Gradle object model.